Danny's eyes swam as the camera flash went off. "Okay, I showed you the portal, my parents are gonna be back any minute, can we go now?" He asked, rubbing his eyes with the jumpsuit that his friends had insisted on having a picture with.

Sam grinned, lowering her Polaroid camera as she looked inside the electrical cord-filled guts of what was supposed to be a portal to another, spectral dimension. "You aren't even slightly amazed by this?" She asked, twisting some dials on the side of it with black lacquered nails to show the same two o'clock position on all three.

Danny rolled his eyes. "It doesn't even work." He said, casting an aside glance at the monstrosity, largely missing his gothic friend's tinkering.

"Yeah, but you seriously aren't even slightly stoked about a portal to another dimension?" Tucker said, staring at the constellations of glowing LEDs in the shadowed interior of the Fenton ™ Ghost Portal. He crouched down to his knees to look up at the ceiling of the tunnel. "Wait, did your parents dig under the street to give this thing room? Pretty sure they didn't get a permit for that."

Danny shrugged. "Honestly, based on what my parents have told me about the place that they're trying to access, I'm kind of in the opposite direction of… un… stoked, alright, that was terrible." He rubbed the bridge of his nose, ignoring the strict 'legalities' of his parents interests. "Let's just say that I'm happier with it not-working, okay?"

"It's not even a little cool?" Sam asked, raising her eyebrows at him.

A small smile crossed Danny's face. "Okay, maybe a little." He admitted, his eyes wandering across the gloomy interior of the portal. "Just imagine what a Ghost Zone would look like."

Tucker grinned. "Green? Gloomy? Slightly hovery?"

Sam smirked. "Burtonesque?" She suggested. "Filled with spirals and black, white, and green mingling into chaotic swirls that the souls of the departed coast along for their astral journey into mystery? A surrealist painting to facilitate the amazing fantasy of the afterlife?"

Danny laughed. "Either or, I guess." He said, pulling on the white and black jumpsuit one leg at a time. He paused as Sam quickly tore off the Fenton logo.

"You don't need to be going around with your dad's face on your chest." She said quickly, before pulling a bit of black vinyl out of her backpack. "Now this, this is slightly more up to speed." She said as she smoothed out the stylized 'D' on his chest.

"Looks cool to me." Tucker chimed in happily.

Danny smoothed out a few wrinkles in the suit and looked at the portal to nowhere. "Is it just me, or is this starting to look like the beginning of a horror B-movie?" He asked.

Sam chuckled. "Or maybe a superhero flick?"

Danny laughed. "Maybe." He turned to face the dark interior of the Fenton ™ Ghost Portal, taking a last gulp of air. "If I die, avenge me." He called back to Sam and Tucker as he reached out to feel his way along the wall. As he felt a button press in under the weight of his palm and heard some turbine at the back of the portal whir to life as consequence, Danny wished he had the time to slam his head against the wall. Repeatedly.

Electrocution for self-inflicted punishment for bonehead moves worked too, he guessed, as what felt like a couple thousand volts of electricity hit him. He blacked out for a moment, black and white stripes dancing across his vision and the sound of manic laughter ringing in his ears.

"First of all; ow." Danny groaned weakly after he dragged himself out of the now glowing portal, steaming and covering his eyes. He looked back at the eerily glowing doorway into the afterlife. "Aaand now it's working. Great." He muttered as he collapsed on the lab floor.

"Danny! Are you okay?" Tucker asked, kneeling down to his friend's level. Sam hovered nearby, watching with obvious concern in her eyes.

Danny reached up gingerly to hold his head, mussing up his already wild black hair. "I can taste my fillings and I feel like Dash found a way to punch my brain instead of using bad nicknames, but I think I'll live." He looked over to Sam. "Please don't tell me you took a picture of that."

She laughed deliriously, eyes still clearly worried. "Of course I didn't." The camera quickly disappeared into her bag as she joined Tucker at Danny's side. "Are you alright?"

"Give me an hour." He replied as he pushed himself up on his knees, slowly making his way to the stairs, his friends following close so they could catch him if they needed to.

Jack Fenton, all six foot eight of him, was sitting at the kitchen table, grinning as he fixed the final detail on a BLT that was more B than L and T combined. "You all right there, Danny?" He asked brightly as he stuck what looked like a shish-kabob with several colors of olives in the center of his afternoon snack. "You look dead on your feet." He added after a moment, a slightly worried look on his face.

Danny mentally snorted at that, though he quickly caught himself. Where the heck had that come from? He thought before shaking his head. "Long day at school." He said flatly, limping towards his bedroom. "I'm just gonna… crash for a bit, okay?" He waved tiredly at Sam and Tucker before disappearing through the door. "I'll catch you guys tomorrow, alright?"

Tucker waved uncertainly and Sam just watched him leave, her expression sad and slightly confused.

Danny turned over in his bed, lifting his head to stare blearily at his alarm clock. It was a few minutes before 3 A.M. He groaned, turning over again to cover his head with his pillow. The laughing from the Ghost Portal was ringing in his ears again, and the feeling of bugs skittering across his skin wasn't helping his insomnia. The teen finally sat up, shuffling to the bathroom where he temporarily blinded himself with the light. He blinked through the flashes of black and white, massaging his eyes before looking at the mirror. He half expected to see some kind of zombie staring back at him, all crooked teeth, jaundiced eyes, and peroxide blonde hair, and he breathed a sigh of relief as he saw himself, worn and sleep-deprived, but still normal. Black messy hair, blue eyes that could barely focus, tan skin that was slightly grey around the edges… "What was I expecting, again?" He chuckled wearily to himself as he gripped the sink.

His reflection grinned jauntily, lazily looking back at him. "I don't know, kid." It said in a gravelly voice, its blue eyes flashing a sickly yellow. "What were you expecting?"

Danny quickly ran back to the relative safety of his bedroom, the dark voice chuckling in his ear all the way.

The blare of his alarm clock startled Danny into wakefulness, and as he fumbled for the 'Off' switch, the nightmare from the night before clinging to his mind like a cobweb. It had to be just that, a nightmare. What else could it have been?

'I don't know… maybe a ghost?' A stray thought suggested smugly, using the same voice that had sent the teen running earlier.

"Not helping." Danny muttered as he held up his clothes from the day before. Well, they looked clean enough. He sniffed them cautiously. Alright, the ozone smell was a little too weird, even for a Fenton. He tossed them into the dirty clothes bin, sighing. Well, there was only so much a hazmat suit could do against a ghost portal, he thought as he opened his closet. Now, what to wear?

Danny probably should have taken the advice of his 'Don't Do It' shirt and stayed home. It wasn't like his mom hadn't brought it up. But Fenton men weren't exactly known for good judgment. Just look at his near death experience with the ghost portal the other day and his dad's day-to-day wardrobe choices.

But here he was, going through another day at Casper High, getting to listen to a grating stream of running commentary on top of his normal teenage drama. So far he hadn't slipped, though Dash had found himself completely ignored three more times more than his ego was ready for.

"Fenton! You're in Fen-trouble!" He yelled, punching the locker in front of the black haired teen.

Danny failed to look appropriately awed by the train wreck attempt at wordplay, yawning as he slid Dash's hand to the right so he could get into his locker.

"Fenton!" Dash screamed as Danny darted down the hallway to his next class.

Maybe the locker method was a bit old school (if a kid had died in one after getting shoved in before summer break in the fifties, it wouldn't have been too big of a surprise). Maybe it was a bit of a worn stereotype that would be physically impossible if Casper High's lockers were a little bit smaller. Neither of those facts really occurred to Dash as he shoved Danny Fenton into a locker that he knew didn't get a lot of traffic, especially after school hours. As to how the little weirdo was going to get out, well, that didn't occur to him either. Even if it had, he wouldn't have cared. It was just Fenton after all. What could he do?

In the dark interior of the locker, Danny's eyes started to glow yellow as minutes and then eventually an hour passed. "Jerk." He snarled quietly as he flicked the old mirror in the locker. "Don't suppose there's an emergency exit here?" He asked the air, right as a wisp of cold came out of his mouth, shocking his teeth. The locker creaked open and Danny looked around. The hall was empty, all the students having ran out of the building at top speed once the bell rang. Danny looked back into the locker and its discolored mirror. "Thanks… I guess." He said to no-one before running out of the building.

Life didn't get any more normal for Danny Fenton as the week went by. He was still experiencing chills in the strangest places, his nightmares were getting longer and weirder, the voice in his head was somehow becoming more annoying, Sam was being weird around him (weirder, anyway), and his dad was going nuts over their new 'ghost detector'. Well, the last bit was Fenton-level normal, he guessed.

Danny sighed as he closed up his science homework, which was finally finished after having to recopy everything after his dad had spilled… something green and glowing on it. Typical evening in the Fenton house. Putting away his backpack, he paused, picking up a book that he didn't recognize. "The Handbook For the… Recently Deceased?" He read incredulously before flipping it open to a random section, scanning it, and cringing. "It's like trying to read a stereo manual." Danny muttered before tossing it over his shoulder to land in the corner of his room. If it was a prank, though it didn't strike him as either Sam's or Tucker's style, it wasn't that good of one.

He completely missed the card that slipped out of the pages, which read 'DO NOT SAY HIS NAME' in spidery handwriting, and slipped into his pajamas, prepared for another series of surreal dreams.

This dream was more colorful and clear than normal, filled with golden sand and a painfully blue sky that Danny normally only saw in the dead of summer. Not that he was paying attention to that detail. "Aaand now this dream has just graduated from 'nightmare'-level weird to 'weird 80/90's cartoon' level weird." Danny deadpanned as he stared at the gigantic striped worm that had burst out of the sand in front of him. The creature snarled before another head ("What the hell." Danny murmured.) sprouted out of the first's mouth, baring two separate sets of spiral striped teeth that were two parts raw terror to every one part ridiculous.

'Sandworm!' The voice shrieked, sounding terrified for the first time since it had started playing Greek chorus to Danny's life.

Danny pointed at the newly dubbed sandworm. "Is there a reason why it has a head inside of another head?" He asked.

'Because one head is insufficient to witness the sheer amount of homicide it commits, so shut up and beat feet before it witnesses you, kid!' The voice screamed, almost seeming to take control of Danny's legs as the teen bolted. The sandworm howled, and Danny started running properly, putting on another burst of speed that took him over the golden sands and away from… the thing that really needed a better name than 'sandworm'. 'Evil McGothy Murder Snake From Hell' seemed like a more appropriate title.

Unfortunately, running only encouraged the sandworm to give chase, howling as it dove in and out of the sands in pursuit of prey that should have been too small for a creature of its size to bother with. Danny looked around wildly for some kind of escape, some crack to hide in, something… He blinked. Okay, one magic, floating door a few hundred feet straight up. If only he could fly. Wait, dream logic, right?

'Kid, I hate to make bad puns at a time like this, but that ain't gonna fl-'

The voice cut off as Danny, eyes flashing yellow-green, shot into the air like a bullet, his smaller spray of sand getting swallowed up by the cascade of gold that the sandworm threw up as it burrowed deep into the desert again. The rumbles of the giant predator were drowned out by Danny's manic cry-laughing, even as he pulled open the door and ran for the nearest exit, past the shocked faces of a mixed bag of monsters, the most memorable of which was a mummy-faced judge.

Stopping short just clear of the building, Danny Fenton stared at the bustling, brightly colored, barely physics compliant city. "Well, dang. And here I was hoping for Kansas." He said after taking a moment to process the sheer insanity of it all.

The voice chuckled. "Kid, welcome to the Neitherworld."

"Get back here, Beetlejuice!" A nasal voice screamed from inside the building Danny had just torn through.

"And that's our cue to exit." The voice said through Danny's mouth, snapping his fingers and disappearing in a little puff of smoke, leaving an empty tin can and a startled bat to deal with his problems.

Danny woke up, running his hand through his hair. "Beetlejuice?" He asked his room. "What kind of name is 'Beetlejuice'?" He muttered as he limped over to his mirror, his reflection looking surprisingly rested for once. Danny rubbed his eyes, gesturing helplessly as he tried to wrap his mind around that strange dream. "Seriously, 'Beetlejuice'?"

"That's my name, feel free to wear it out." His reflection asked, raising an eyebrow as it folded its arms cockily.

Danny dragged his hand down his face. "That wasn't a dream, was it?" He asked.

His reflection grinned, showing off a mouth full of yellowed teeth that rivaled those of most zippers. "Nope! Nice job outrunning that sandworm last night, though. I go to pieces around those things." As Beetlejuice said those words, his form cracked and fell to the bottom of the frame like glass, reforming after a moment, though not into a copy of the teen staring at him. Instead, the ghost appeared as an older, peroxide blonde, and obviously dead man, as made clear by his bloodless skin and the moldy patches that grew on it.

"Did you die in middle of a 80's Halloween party or something?" Danny asked after a moment of silence.

The ghost bared his teeth in what might have been a grin if it wasn't so crooked. "Hey, it's been a while since I've been out of the Neitherworld; cut me some slack on not keeping up with the fashion habits of the living."

"Let me get this straight. You're a ghost." Danny said.

Beetlejuice smirked, gesturing widely. "The ghost with the most, kid."

The teen pinched the bridge of his nose. "I don't even know what that means, but next point; you're haunting me?"

The ghost touched the tips of his red stained fingers together. "Technically yes."

"'Technically'?" Danny's voice jumped up a pitch.

"Well, to be less technical, what makes up me is mixed up inside of you. On the molecular level." A bout of mad scientist laughter tore out of the ghost's mouth as lightning flashed in the background of the mirror.

Danny facepalmed. "The Ghost Portal." He muttered, turning away from the mirror. He looked at the alarm clock. Twenty minutes until school started, meaning… "Great. I missed the bus."

Beetlejuice grinned as the sound of game show music went off inside the mirror. "Exactomundo! You win nothing, nadda, zip, zilch, big-old goose eggs for stating… the obvious!"

Danny spun the mirror on its hinge before grabbing his backpack and running out of the house, leaving the ghost to make sick noises in the mirror.

School had almost flown by that day, a rare happenstance, but this almost made up for all of it. Danny leaned on his arm, not even listening to his dad as of a few minutes ago, though it was hard to ignore his wild gesticulating, even if the words had since blurred into a distinctly dad-ish hum. He looked over at Tucker, who had dozed off, snoring quietly and drooling out of the corner of his mouth, and then over to Sam, who looked like she wanted to be correcting him on some point, but was too bored to actually do so. He sighed, staring back at his dad, who was now rummaging through scientific glasswork.

'Kid, this is the pits!' Beetlejuice snapped in his ear. Danny winced, rubbing his temple. He still wasn't used to the constant chatter coming from inside his skull, even knowing the cause of it wasn't psychological. The ghost continued. 'Not that I have any issue with pits, but, you know, figure of speech.'

Danny rolled his eyes, drawing Sam's attention. She made a questioning gesture and he pointed at his dad, gesturing helplessly while rolling his eyes again. Apparently satisfied with the non-answer, she pulled out a black bound journal that she had been carrying for a few weeks, scribbling down something. When she didn't show it to Danny, he turned his attention elsewhere, namely, the Ghost Portal.

Which had just opened, spitting out a couple of ghostly octopi. Great.

He checked on his dad, oblivious to anything except his speech and the ghost hunting gear he was rummaging through. Tucker was still asleep, Sam was brooding over something in her black book… Danny surreptitiously pointed his finger at the ghosts, gesturing to eyes that flashed a poisonous yellow-green and then back to them, before miming the crushing of an object.

Apparently, animal-based ghosts did not take courses in teenage sign language, as they decided to grab Tucker and Sam before phasing through the ceiling. Danny's dad was still going on about ghosts, not noticing the actual ghosts, as in accordance with the universal laws of irony.

Alright, time for plan B, Danny thought dryly as he darted up the stairs.

'Plan B? I love plan B!' Beetlejuice burst out, sounding like an excited puppy given a range of human speech. 'You gonna let me out? Huh, D-man? Huuuh?'

"As much as I hate the idea… I think it's time to turn on the juice." Danny said, just before his blue eyes flashed yellow-green. His hands curled into red-nailed claws that pulled a black and white stripes from seeming nothingness to settle on his thin frame in the form of a pinstriped suit, the whirl of fabric concealing the rest of his transformation, only allowing the final result to be seen, with the bloodless skin and a rictus grin that rivaled most zippers taking over the boy's human features. "It's show time!" Beetlejuice cackled madly as he flew out of the house, legs forming a striped tail as he flew after Danny's friends.

It didn't take long to find them, especially with Tucker's screaming. Beetlejuice stopped short of the scene, grinning at the ectopuses and the two teenagers stared, looking completely and utterly confused by his interruption. "What? You never see a bio-exorcist before?" He asked, folding his arms in a pout. "I used to have a reputation, you know."

"Can you skip to the part where you save us?" Tucker asked, eyes flicking between the distant ground, the snarling ectopuses, and the ghost with the most. "If, you know, you're gonna do that."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Beetlejuice said, slicking back his hair and studying his nails.

'Are you gonna save them or not?' Danny yelled just for Beetlejuice to hear.

The ghost took a second to wiggle a finger around in his ear, flicking a bit of wax away. "Ugh, fine." He muttered. "Not even gonna get paid for this, am I?" He pooled a bit of green energy into his hands before throwing beams at the two ghosts, swooping in to catch the two falling teens by the back of their shirts. "And stay out!" He screamed after the retreating ectopuses.

"Who are you?" Sam asked, eyes wide as he set them down on the sidewalk outside Fenton Works. Tucker immediately dropped to his knees to kiss the cement.

Beetlejuice grinned crookedly as he pulled a live beetle out of his hair, rolling it between his fingers. "I got a lot of names, little miss licorice stick, and not all of them fit on my business card. But you can call me 'BJ'." He tossed the unfortunate beetle up into the air and caught it in his mouth, biting it in half with a loud crunch.

Sam made a face as the ghost snagged the rest of the bug with a long, purple tongue. "Never heard of a ghost like you before." She said, forcing a straight face.

"Cause there ain't no other ghost like me, babe. I'm the ghost with the most." He smirked, snapping his fingers before disappearing in a puff of smoke and a stray bat that proceeded freak out in the sudden daylight.

"The ghost with the most what?" Tucker asked after a moment. Sam just frowned at where the ghost had been.

After that, life, as it could be described, went on. Between school, the hectic home life of dodging ghost catching equipment, which Beetlejuice was just as big a magnet for as he was for trouble, dirt, and other ghosts, the occasional night spent in the Neitherworld, and figuring out exactly what kind of perks came with being 'half-ghost', Danny managed to eke out his average existence, though he could have done without the constant stream of 'Do this unspeakable thing' and other assorted Beetlejuice jabber.

"So… Danny. Anything weird happen since the… accident?" Sam asked, leaning against the locker next to Danny's.

"You mean, besides you doing the same unsubtle line of questioning every morning like a random NPC?" Tucker asked as Danny shook his head and hung up his backpack. He shoved his hand over the small mirror stuck to the inside of the locker, leaving Beetlejuice to make faces at him from in between his fingers.

Sam rolled her eyes. "I meant anything weird related to the Ghost Portal." She said.

Danny pulled out his English text book. "Let's see… surreal dreams, Jazz being on my case every day, parents actually managing to make ghost locating equipment that, let's just note this little tidbit, hates me… Yeah, that's about it." He slammed the locker closed with a bang. "Oh, and your psychic powers."

Sam folded her arms. "I do not have psychic powers-"

"You've accurately predicted six different pop quizzes, one pep rally, three dissections, and ten separate comments from the jocks." Tucker said, tapping on his PDA. "Also, three out of the last four ghosts. The 'Bio-Exorcist' guy was the one exception."

"It's not like Dash or Kwan have any original material, come on." Sam scoffed.

"You predicted the ghosts?" Danny asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, not all of them…" She said, breaking eye contact.

Tucker mouthed 'three out of four' at Danny before reading off the list out loud. "The octopuses and the giant Sumatran rat."

"I thought we agreed never to talk about that again." Sam muttered as she twisted open the combination to her locker. "Anyway, I don't have psychic powers. But…" Here she smirked. "I do have the power of moral superiority on my side."

As she walked away towards first hour, Tucker and Danny shared a look.

"Did you get an ominous feeling from that too?" Danny asked his best friend.

Danny raised an eyebrow at the lunch option of the day. "Alright, what is this?" He asked as he set down his lunch tray in front of his Goth friend.

"Turfloaf." Sam said triumphantly.

Tucker's face went blank. "What."

Danny poked the… thing with his fork. "Okay, second question; why?"

"The school board finally approved of my ultra-recyclo-vegetarian lunch option." Sam said, smiling proudly at her handiwork, even as Tucker stared unblinkingly into the depths of inedibility. "People are going to be eating responsibly for once!"

"Um, Sam? 'Option' implies that there are options. This was the only thing there and I'm not even sure that it's edible." Danny poked the literal slice of turf with his fork again. A beetle scrambled out of the grass and he slapped it.

'Gonna eat that?' Beetlejuice asked. Danny flicked it away as the ghost huffed.

"It's the canned pudding incident all over again…" Tucker whispered to no-one.

"It's not… how can you compare it to that?" Sam protested. "Nobody is going to get salmonella from this!"

"It's still garbage." Danny said.

"It's not-!"

"It's garbage." Tucker said flatly as he flipped the plate onto the floor.

Any further conversation was cut off by Danny shivering, a little cloud of mist coming out of his mouth. Sam's eyebrows met her hairline.

"You didn't tell me-"

Danny pushed his chair away from the table and grabbed his lunch tray. "Don't ask, don't tell." He said quickly, breaking for the garbage can. A glob of mud splattered against the back of his head.

"Fenton!" Dash yelled. Danny's eyes flashed a poisonous yellow.

The altercation was quick, dirty, and over in less than 30 seconds, though the food fight slash mud run lasted much longer and provided all the cover Danny needed to sneak into the kitchen. He stopped short when he saw the ghostly lunch lady.

"Um… What brings you to Casper High, Miss… Lunch… Lady… Person?" Danny asked, wishing that this could be someone else's problem.

'It could have been. You just needed to not… do things.' Beetlejuice muttered.

The lunch lady ghost turned to look at the teen with a look of benign confusion. "Hello, children."

"Children-?" Danny turned to glare at his friend. "Sam."

'What is it with me and pushy goth chicks?' Beetlejuice huffed as Danny's eyes glowed yellow with annoyance.

Sam grinned. "So you are Danny Phantom again!"

Danny stared at her. "…Excuse me?"

The lunch lady ghost floated in the background, checking the clock. Lunch hour was almost over now. "I can return tomorrow, if that's agreeable." She said before disappearing through the floor. Her exit was ignored by everyone but Tucker, who raised a finger and opened his mouth, but apparently thought better of saying anything.

They gathered after school in the town park, checking absently for eavesdroppers before clustering around a picnic table to spill their respective parts of the story.

"So let me get this straight." Tucker said, pulling out his PDA to take notes. "Ghosts are real, not to mention dangerous, Danny is part ghost, and has 'discovered' either a new part of the Ghost Zone or a completely different dimension… and Sam is either a time traveler or from an alternate universe where Danny was part ghost but in a different way than he is here?" He gave his list a suspicious look, as if his PDA was capable of lying to him. "Am I the only normalish one in the group?" He asked loudly after a second.

Danny cast a look sideways at Sam. "I'm a little stuck on the fact that you deliberately put me in a potentially, no, an actually lethal situation without EVEN TELLING ME WHAT THE HELL YOU WERE ACTUALLY PLANNING!" He said, his voice going from perfect calmness to full throated yelling that was just as much Beetlejuice's voice as it was Danny's.

"And that's just creepy." Tucker noted, making another note on his PDA. "Blaming you for that, Sam."

"Alright, so I maybe should have told you about it earlier…" Sam said, holding her hands up in surrender. "But would you have believed me?" She asked.

"You called it on six different pop quizzes." Tucker said. "That would have been proof enough for me."

"Yeah, we would have believed you and you wouldn't have had to discombobulate my molecular structure to do it either." Danny said sourly. "Isn't that what friends do?"

Sam didn't answer, instead looking deep into the purple weave of her backpack, so Tucker scanned his notes again, organizing them for the fifth time before changing the subject.

"So… apparently Earth-2 Danny had a… battle cry and a transformation sequence." The tech geek squinted at his PDA. "…'like Sailor Moon'? Why did I write that?" He shook his head before looking at Danny. "Do you do that?"

Danny grimaced. "…Sort of."

"What, is it something like 'going ghost'?" Tucker smiled. "Dude, that's so nerdy, I'm calling you out on it if that's the case."

"It's actually…" Danny ducked his head under his arms in embarrassment. "… 'It's time to turn on the juice'."

A moment of silence passed, and then Tucker snorted. "Dude, that sucks."

Sam couldn't contain her own snort. "That does suck. What does that even mean?"

Danny ran his fingers through his hair. "It might just be easier to… give a demonstration." He said after a moment. 'Don't mess them up, please.' He mentally pleaded with the ghost.

'Fingers crossed, kid.' Beetlejuice said as Danny activated the transformation, hunching over as his hair bleached out and he fell under the picnic table.

"Danny!" Sam yelled, cutting off as a deathly pale hand with red fingertips grabbed on to the side of the table, pulling up one slightly rumpled Beetlejuice, who took the opportunity that the stunned silence gave him to dust himself off and adjust his tie into something resembling a straight line.

"The Bio-Exorcist!" Tucker exclaimed before squinting at the ghost. "…You look different." He said accusingly.

Beetlejuice flashed a crooked grin at the two teens. "A bit more like your buddy than I did last time, right?" He thumbed the sharper edge of his jaw that being part of Danny had brought out. "Not so sure of it myself, might just be a weird ghost thing, but, hey, not the worst alteration I've experienced." He waggled his red tinged fingers at Tucker, who cringed, hoping that those weren't an example.

"But why 'turn on the juice'?" Sam muttered, casting a suspicious eye towards the ghost. "Is it an electricity thing…?"

"It's part of the name!" Beetlejuice said, leaning over the table with a manic grin before drawing back into a much more smug posture. "Plus, y'know, the kid's quoting me and I absolutely love that."

"BJ… B… Juice." Sam squinted at the ghost. "… What's the 'B'?"

Beetlejuice grinned as he pulled a beetle out of his hair and ate it without breaking eye contact. If she couldn't figure it out, well, he wasn't gonna play charades with her.

Tucker cringed as the unfortunate insect met its grisly end. "Dude, that is nasty." He said.

Sam looked away. "What is it with you and… beetles. Beetle… Juice?"

The ghost chuckled. "Got it in one. Smart cookie for a licorice stick."

CHAPTER END

Well, here's one of those things I got distracted with, finally finished (at least this chapter of it). Feedback is appreciated, as always.